


Ticks and Tocks from Broken Clocks (#Spellbound)

by tsukara



Category: MisSpelled (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukara/pseuds/tsukara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn isn't going to give up magic just because the five are not getting along. When something goes awry and locks the building... the campus... maybe the whole town into frozen time, where the only ones who can move are them, they'll have to work together to get life back to what passes for normal--and figure out what else is lurking there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ticks and Tocks from Broken Clocks (#Spellbound)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entwashian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwashian/gifts).



They were all still in the same class for the rest of the term. That didn't mean they had to work together, or do anything more than studiously ignore each other. It was a tense, silent stand-off, made no better with Stella's occasional, wistful glances or Emma's fleeting glares at the back of Gladys' head whenever she spoke.

The impasse didn't even last until the end of term.

\--

Ironically, it all started on the way to class. More accurately, on Quinn's way to class, cutting across the leafy campus. There was a street that ran through part of campus, but it usually had few people on it and the ones that were drove slowly, since this particular path crossed it at a point that had limited visibility. So of course Quinn wasn’t expecting the white sedan that came around the corner, going way too fast, right as she stepped out into the road. 

Unable to move in time, Quinn squeezed her eyes shut, and felt...nothing.

After a few seconds she cracked first one eye, then the other open to stare at the white bumper a few inches from her leg.

Letting out a breath made shaky with adrenaline, Quinn took in more of the situation, quickly realizing that, in a moment of self-preservation, she had stopped time around her again. Quickly, she took a few steps back, out of range of bumper, car, and inattentive driver, safely on the sidewalk. Only then did she focus on bringing everything back up to speed. 

The car screeched to a halt, a good few inches beyond where it definitely would have hit her. Quinn breathed out again, the lingering adrenaline rushing her on. She glared at the bewildered-looking guy behind the wheel, and hurried on.

\--

Everything had started out normal. As normal as 'normal' ever was for any of them. Not only doing your best to keep your growing powers in check but ignoring the only people who could possibly understand what you were going through was tough. They were managing. Even Stella and Gladys didn't mention 'that sort of thing' when hanging out, but it was hard.

The class always felt like it went slowly anyway, due to several factors. But typically it didn't slow to a standstill until at least ten minutes into the lecture. So when, one by one, they showed up to class to find everyone in their seats, frozen solid, they knew right away that there was definitely something unusual going on. 

It wasn't hard to figure out that it wasn't any of the four of them, standing around in the classroom. None of them had time powers, after all. And Quinn was the only one who hadn't shown up yet.

"Maybe someone should go look for her?" Nina's tentative suggestion carried out into the corridor. 

"Maybe you should go looking for her," was Gladys' caustic reply. 

Whether Nina worked up the nerve to say no to Gladys became a moot point a few seconds later as Quinn hurried in, before coming to a stop at the scene in front of her. Three of the other four stood at the front of the classroom, while Stella wandered around among the students, frozen still as statues. "Oh. Crap."

The others turned expectant expressions on her. Quinn shook her head, putting a hand up. "This isn't me," Quinn protested. 

Nina and Gladys, of all people, shared a disbelieving look, but it was Gladys that spoke the apparently mutual thought. "Time, stopped? Frozen people? Kind of seems like your thing."

"Ow!" There was a muted clatter as the other four looked at Stella in the middle of the classroom, two fingers in her mouth as if injured. She blinked at the others staring. "The pen," she removed her fingers, examining the bright-red tips. "It was hot when I tried to pick it up!" 

The returned their attention to Quinn, who was still shaking her head. "Really, I don't think it's me this time." It hadn't been her last time either. To be fair, there had been that one time, with Gladys, but that hadn't been a whole classroom, and only for a few seconds.

"Look, just. Try and get rid of it?" Gladys asked.

Quinn bit her lip, uncertain, then shed her bag to the floor by her feet. It couldn't hurt to try. Closing her eyes and raising her fingers to her temple, she concentrated, feeling the movement of time, willing it back to normal, out of the strange deja vu quality it always took on. 

This time, though, it felt different. like trying to shove molasses. Not only would it not budge, it seemed to ooze away from her grasp. A quick peek revealed that nothing had changed, so she shut her eyes and tried again, straining at the thick magic in the room until she felt on the verge of a headache if she continued. At that point, she gave up, letting her hands fall to her sides. She shook her head at the other's. "I can't get rid of it, it's not me. It's not the usual thing."

"Maybe if we all tried it?" Stella hesitated when the others looked at her. "Sort of... together?"

The idea was dismissed gradually. Not just yet, seemed to be the general, silent consensus. "Look," Nina had on her calm voice of reason. "Did anything unusual happen on the way here? Anything that could explain this?" She paused, then added. "To any of us?"

"How about you?" Emma lobbed the question back at her from where she was perched on the front counter. 

Nina shook her head and shrugged. "No, nothing unusual for me." 

Quinn frowned. "Maybe. I was crossing the street, and someone nearly hit me. But I," she hesitated, trying to come up with a way that didn't make it sound like her fault. "I sort of instinctively stopped the car."

"By stopping time around it," Nina clarified.

Another hesitation. "Well, yes, but that was half a mile away from here," Quinn pointed out. "I've never had much more range than a few hundred feet!" An exasperated sigh escaped. "Let's try what Stella suggested, let's try breaking it together."

"Our powers have been getting stronger, I suppose," Nina said, Gladys and Emma both looking away from the rest of the others. "Maybe if we worked together again."

"Again?" Emma said. "With what happened last time?"

Gladys shook her head. "Fine. I say we try it."

Nina still looked unsure, and Emma took a long moment to glare at the rest of them before slowly sliding down off the desk and clicking over to the rough circle. Quinn frowned, thinking out the logistics. "Okay, let's do this." She raised her palms toward the others so that they all ended up standing with their palms outstretched toward each other, but not quite touching. 

Quinn looked at Emma. "Do you have an incantation?"

Emma looked surprised, like she hadn't expected to be called on, then shook her hair out of her eyes, thinking fast. "Um. Powers above us, powers of light... re-start the world and set it right?"

The suggestion was met with shrugs, since no one could come up with something better, and they began. Quinn took up the chant first, the others joining in slowly. There was a feeling in the air, like tension building to a breaking point, and the faster they chanted together, the more it built.

"Re-start the world and set--"

With a feeling like running headlong into a brick wall, something snapped, tossing all five of them to the smooth tiles among their still-frozen classmates. 

"What the hell was that?" Emma demanded, picking herself up off the floor with startling alacrity. 

Quinn picked herself up more slowly, brushing off her skirt. "I don't know, I felt the same thing as the rest of you."

Nina fussed with her scarf, adjusting it as she got up. "It didn't work." 

"Thanks for stating the obvious," Gladys said icily, leaning on Stella's shoulder as she got back up. Stella stayed sitting on the ground where she had landed, a look of consternation on her face. 

"Look, Quinn, this has been fun and all," Emma said, clearly not meaning a word of it. "But you should just stop it now."

Nina came to Quinn's defense. "We tried, Emma."

Emma scoffed. "It's still her thing, which means it's her fault. Probably from this morning. She did something, and now she can't undo it, which means we're all screwed--"

"What should I have done, let myself get hit by the car?"

"Yes. No!" Emma had come out with the first response without thinking, and clearly wished she could snatch the first word out of the air and stomp on it. "That's not what I meant."

Quinn's glare was icy. "No, I think it is. Fine, Emma. I did this, I messed up, is that what you wanted to hear?"

Emma gave as good as she got in the glare department. "Look. I get it. you wanted to get the gang back together or whatever so you decided to stage this whole thing, but you can seriously stop now. Because hey, here we are. And we still don't like each other. So you can just quit it."

Stella looked ready to speak up from the floor in protest, but Quinn overrode that. "I've tried, Emma, we've tried. I don't want to be stuck in this either, but--" She cut herself off abruptly, breathing in deeply. 

"Hey, hey!" Stella rarely raised her voice, so it managed to get the attention of the others, even the ones ready to go at it. They all stared at her. "Um," she managed.

Nina took over where she left off. "Look. Whether this all happened because of this morning or because of something else, we have tried breaking this. Whatever this is. It didn't work."

Stella frowned up at Nina from where she still sat on the floor. "So what do you think we should do?"

The question hung in the air between the five of them, each mind churning away with its own thoughts on a solution. Finally, Stella spoke up again. "Didn't it kind of feel like... I dunno, that there was something else? When we tried getting rid of this just now."

Gladys looked down at her. "What, like someone else?"

"Somewhere else," Nina added slowly. 

They all pondered what this could mean for a long moment. 

Slowly, Nina laid out what they were all thinking. "So that means we need to figure out what's causing the spell to stick, who or what's doing that..."

"And make them stop," Gladys finished.

Another long silence, until Stella asked, more brightly than the situation would have warranted from anyone else, "So, where do we start?"

\--

They all agreed that the first order of business was probably to find out how far things had spread. It only took a few minutes of walking to discover not only their classroom, but the rest of the building, the people on campus, and even the cars on streets were stuck, the eeriness not helped by the odd, syrupy quality of the light. 

There seemed to be a mutual, unspoken agreement between the five of them to not speak, their footfalls the only noise, even next to the very popular, usually very busy burrito joint across the street from campus. It was busy today too, even though when things stopped it was still a little early for lunch, but everyone frozen in place turned it into a desolate scene filled with mannequins.

"Too creepy," was Stella's summation, when they finally stopped, as a group, in a campus parking lot with almost no people around. The others, in the midst of a sea of parked cars which, at least, were expected to be still, did not argue.

"So, do any of you actually know where we're going?" Emma asked.

Stella looked embarrassed. "I was following the rest of you." Gladys shrugged, indicating that she had been doing the same, for now, Quinn nodding.

Nina frowned, thinking. "I was heading East. I think we should keep going East."

"Is that East?" Emma pointed in a slightly different direction than their direct path was taking them. "Because I feel like we should go that way."

Three of them shook their heads. "Northwest," Quinn told her gently.

With two different directions and no clear choice, they stood in silence for a moment longer before Nina suggested, "What if we split up?"

Stella groaned exaggeratedly. "Split the party? Haven't you ever seen a horror movie?" This prompted an exasperated look from Nina, and a considering one from Gladys. It wasn't totally a weird question, given the situation.

"Still," Nina persisted. "I think it would let us cover more ground. I don't think we should any of us go alone or anything. We don't know what's out there."

They stood and considered for a moment, the weirdness of the situation pressing in from all sides. Quinn was about to point out that it wasn't a terrible idea, when Emma, who had been peering at the hedgerow separating one parking lot from whatever was on the other side, shrieked, causing the others to jump, startled, especially when Emma tried to hide behind Gladys. 

Gladys whirled to glare at her. "What the hell was that?"

"There was something there!" 

The others relaxed a little, knowing Emma and wildlife. "Probably just a squirrel," Nina scoffed. 

Emma sneered. "Not unless squirrels are three feet long and have glowing red eyes now."

"Given what some students feed 'em I wouldn't be shocked," Gladys muttered, causing Emma to turn the look back on the rest of them.

"Fine, don't believe me." It was clear they didn't. 

They moved back to the decision of where to go from here. "Why don't we think about this logically," Nina suggested. "Figure out where to go from here based on that.

Quinn gestured to Nina. "You're our seer. Do you see anything that could help?"

Nina looked around, then back at Quinn, glaring, which startled her. Realizing what Quinn meant, she shut her eyes against Gladys' scowl, Emma's nervous peering, and Stella's uncertainty to concentrate. She looked at the blackness behind her eyes... and then she really looked. "It's... strange," she began. "There's a sort of. Shading. Like looking through tinted glass." Nina noted she was 'looking' East, then turned her face to the left. "But over there, it sort of gets lighter?"

Whatever she was seeing, the effects were not clearly visible to the rest of them. But since nothing she had said seemed too out there--any more than the rest of all of this--they kept any skepticism to themselves.

"Look, I live out that way," Gladys pointed out, nodding to the East. "Most of you guys do too. Why don't we keep going that direction?"

"What about my car, you guys?" Stella said. "I think I'm parked in this lot." There being no objections, they spent a good minute or two wandering the rows until Stella came upon it abruptly. Her keys had been no help in finding it like she was used to, because it wasn't setting off the locking beep as expected. It did unlock when they got right up to it, and they piled in, Gladys in the front, the other three in the back, with some grumbling from Nina and Emma, on either side of Quinn.

So then, of course, the car wouldn't start. It sounded like it was trying to turn over, but weird, like something that should be working simply wasn't.

Gladys rolled her eyes, getting out, instructing Stella to pop the hood. It wasn't like she knew much about cars, but seeing if there was something obviously wrong might help, was her reasoning.

Everything looked normal, to her eyes, at least. "Try it again?" The engine roared to life like nothing had ever happened. A shared shrug between Stella and Gladys dismissed it as coincidence. But once the hood was closed and Gladys was sitting back down in the passenger side, the engine sputtered out and died as abruptly as it had come to life.

"I don't think this is going to work," remarked Nina. But Gladys got back out again, trying the process again. Once again, as soon as she walked away from the engine, it wound down like it had never been running at all. 

Gladys was about to try it a third, exasperated time, but everyone else decided to give it up as not working and piled out. They stood around the car as Stella mournfully locked it.

"Great, I guess we get to go on foot," Emma said caustically. 

One by one they all decided that there didn't seem to be any better ideas, though Nina didn't look very happy about going further toward the perceived darkness, especially without a metal shell to protect them. They fell into a semi-organized group, Gladys forging the way, with Quinn taking up the rearguard. She noticed that Emma seemed even more nervous than she had before they had stopped. 

"You really did see something," Quinn noted. Or, at least, thought she had seen something. 

Emma looked back sharply, to see if she was being mocked, then away when she realized she wasn't. "Yeah, there was definitely something there."

The rest of the four instantly became a little bit more watchful of their surroundings as they went along.

\--

"It's getting darker."

Nina's observation came after they had all agreed to stop for a small break from walking. It was harder to tell with the trees in the small park where they had come to a rest on a couple of free benches. There were only a few other people about, mostly mid-morning dog-walkers.

Nina was right, but the others didn't offer anything further on this topic. Instead, they all did their level best to relax for a few minutes. For Stella, that meant taking out her phone to check messages, first thing. 

But there were no messages. "Hey guys, I can't get any signal." Stella was holding her phone aloft like it would help with the no-bars situation. 

One by one, phones emerged from pockets and bags to confirm what Stella had said. No one had any bars, no signal at all, not even Wi-Fi. Nina was the first to come up with a theory, starting at her iPhone and the spinning loading wheel for everything she tried to access.

Stella laughed once, then looked quelled as the others turned to her. "It's just, Flappy Bird still works?" The bird sank to a game over.

Something moved in the bushes behind them.

All five spun to look, staring into the low shrubs. It was hard to tell at first, nothing more than a slinking shadow along the ground, but then it turned burning ember eyes on them. 

"I told you it wasn't a damn squirrel!" Emma's voice was high and tight with fear. Not only was it shaped like a raccoon gone horribly wrong, there was a growl, low and guttural. 

It slunk nearer to them, all five clustering closer together, but after a moment of standoff, seemed to decide they weren't worth, and turned away, disappearing into the underbrush as quickly as it had appeared.

"Definitely not a squirrel." Emma missed Gladys' eye roll at the repetition.

"Um." Stella began uncertainly. "Didn't that leash have a dog on it when we got here?"

The others, one by one (not wanting to not miss the return of the creature), turned to look. The leash was still there, the frozen woman walking empty air, plastic bags in the other hand... but no pooch. 

They stared at each other unnerved. Then, hesitantly, Nina said "I think we should keep moving." The others did not disagree.

\--

Nobody had really noticed that Ian's house was on a hill. A somewhat nicer part of town sure, but an incline was not something they had taken into account while riding in Emma's car. No one had put together Ian's house and the direction of East, being such a vague direction at that point. But that did seem to be where Nina was leading them. 

Normally Gladys would be the first to argue with Nina and what she saw, but she was taking them to her boyfriend. She'd have to be heartless not to worry about him in this situation, she rationalized, so she said nothing and, with two of the most outspoken ones in the group united in direction, they kept forging ahead, even through complaints.

"Ughhh, no one told me there would be hills," Stella complained, dragging herself upward, simulating more effort than was actually being taken. Emma still threw her a commiserating look.

They had all been walking for a while as the neighborhood got less urban, more leafy, and, yes, a little steeper. Gladys shook her head. "We're almost there."

It was almost an indication of the neighborhood, how many people had been around at that time of morning to walk the dogs, seemingly not pressed for time. Occasionally there were some other people, random citizens on their way to parked cars that they hadn't ever reached or mowing lawns that were only half-cut. 

More dogs were disappearing too. Perhaps the creatures were being more careful, but none of the five noticed anything too much freakier than what they had encountered on their walk so far. They would just notice it, out of the orner of their eye or on the edge of their hearing. Rustles. Empty leashes. Flickers that turned out to be nothing, now, once you looked.

"Is that lady walking a cat?" Emma asked, tone halfway between disgust and bemusement. It was, yes, a cat. The fat calico stood frozen mid-prance, all five eyeing it as they passed.

They didn't look back at it.

More walking, broken sidewalks that, Nina muttered once before Gladys' glare shut her up, should be reported as code violations.

All at once, Stella seemed to get a sudden burst of energy, running down the sidewalk. The others tensed. "Mrs. Chen! Mrs--" she stopped abruptly, turning away. "Ohhhh riiiight, frozen, yeah, that's. Still really creepy," she said, rejoining the rest of them.

They passed the white-haired woman with her german shepherd in silence, all the more unnerved after Stella had broken the silence in such a way. A few feet down the sidewalk, Stella glanced behind her, as if to say something to her family friend before they left, and froze. "No way."

The sidewalk was empty. Quinn had been half expecting the large dog to be gone, but the woman was gone as well, no sign that they had been there at all. Stella backed up until Gladys took her arm to pull her back to the group. 

Emma swallowed hard, then said, "we must be almost there." They pressed on, as a group, sticking close together.

\--

"This is Ian's place!" Gladys was moving at an almost-run from the rest of them before they could say anything. Not wanting to leave her alone, they followed her up to the back walk, all eyes on the surrounding hedges as they went through. 

Which meant they practically ran Gladys over where she was standing on the well-manicured back lawn, behind the same hedgerow they had all hid behind last time. This time though, once they had all recovered to peer in through the windows, there was no one visible inside the house. 

Gladys, once the others had managed to not fall all over her, was determined to actually find her boyfriend and his parents, apparently, dodging around the hedge, the rest of them following with varying amounts of faint protest.

The door was hard to open, Gladys noticed, like there was a hundred pound weight behind it. But once she'd shoved it open, there didn't seem to be anything else out of sorts in the darkened entrance hall. Even here though, the light seemed to be draining.

Only now did she seem to notice that she had an escort in the form of the other four. "Come on," she whispered, making her way down the hall toward the kitchen. 

There was Ian, midway through a bite of toast at the breakfast bar, his father holding the paper and reaching for his cup of coffee. His mother, they saw as they entered the kitchen properly, leaning over a skillet on the stove. It was only in their imagination that the normal sounds of life existed, from the soft crinkle of newspaper to the crunch of toasted bread. 

Emma began to back up out of the kitchen. "Come on, this is weird."

"He's fine, let's go," Nina added.

Gladys looked fondly at Ian, the fact that he was safe covering all manner of ills from the day. Gently, Quinn put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll go fix this." 

Gladys stopped herself just short of touching his cheek, then pulled her hand back. "Yeah." She turned and rejoined the rest of them. 

As a group, they moved back toward the entrance hall. But Gladys, taking one last look back at Ian, gasped sharply, stopping the group.

Ian wasn't where he had been, though he hadn't quite disappeared. Instead, he was three feet from where he had been, standing, kissing his mother on the cheek, seemingly just as frozen and stock-still as he had been the moment they had all set foot in this kitchen.

No matter how hard they stared at him now, he wasn't moving. Wasn't even breathing, which given the length they stared at him--hard as it was to reckon--was weird.

They stared until it was clear that no matter what had just happened, Ian wasn't going anywhere. Finally Quinn reiterated, "Let's go fix this."

They crept cautiously out of the house, none of them leaving the side of the others, all feelings before this put aside.

\--

Nina led them from the place, eyeing every branch of shrub and sunken shadow like she was about to be attacked at any given moment, even jumping when Quinn put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Whatever row might have been had about Nina's twitchiness or Quinn's touchiness was preempted by the unease that lay over all of them, and a need to keep moving. 

Gladys kept looking back over her shoulder, Nina drifting ahead as point for the group, but Ian made no reappearance. Neither did the strange shadow creatures they had seen before. 

Half a block down, Nina stopped at a fence, slowly pressing a hand to it, then turning to the others. "This is it."

"This is what?" Stella asked.

Nina peeked around the corner, then answered in a small voice, "The center of the darkness."

Quinn swallowed thickly, moving to swap places with Nina, who was all too happy to move further to the back. "Whatever it is we're looking for."

One by one they peer around the corner, stacked heads to get a look. Stella, rolled herself down onto the ground, peering around the fence with the others. At least it secured her a position from which she could see.

The house was covered in the sort of plasticky paper that builders used on a house that was undergoing renovations. It should have crinkled with noise in the slightest breeze, but didn't, pressed close to the bones of the house.

"Here?" Emma asked.

Nina stared at the house as if willing it to give her answers. The building was not forth-coming. Still, she answered, "Yes. It's where it all meets." With a finger, she traced several lines, invisible to everyone else, across the arc of the sky, meeting there, in front of them.

Still, none of them were exactly leaping at the chance to go explore an abandoned house with no idea what might be inside. They stood clustered behind the fence for a long moment more. "Um. Are we gonna... go inside or something?" Stella asked, finally.

They looked at each other, each with her own level of uncertainty. Finally, Gladys rolled her eyes, pushing Quinn and Nina aside to forge her way down the path toward the front door.

The others, with a quick glance at each other, scrambled to follow, nearly running her over when Gladys stopped, staring at the front door. It was ajar, nothing but darkness visible inside. Not that out on the walkway was much better, given how exposed it was. 

Stella noticed that something had caught Nina's eye off and up in a tree by the side of the path, almost over them, and looked too. "I really think we should go in now."

The glowing eyes in the tree convinced the rest of them with no further arguments, piling into the darker entrance hall. Big hulking shapes to the left resolved themselves into couches, draped with white sheets. An open door to the right showed a large table similarly draped, though the chairs were nowhere to be found.

"Nina?" Quinn asked softly. "Where now?"

A quick glance at the others indicated that at least none of them had any better ideas, so she closed her eyes, turning slightly in place to 'see' better. But she shook her head after a few long, silent moments. "I can't see anything, it's too dark."

No one made a comment to Nina about her vision, or lack thereof, though Emma was only quelled by a look from Quinn. As more seconds didn't tick by, nothing attacked them. Slowly, they relaxed enough to spread out through the entry hall, checking the place out. 

Stella wandered a few steps up the stairs, peering into the murk on the upper level, not seeing anything worth commenting on. To the side, Nina ran her finger over a crack in the large mirror hanging on the wall. Thinking she saw something move, she whirled, but there was nothing behind her. She shook her head and moved on.

In the living room, Emma gingerly picked up the corner of one of the dust covers, trying to take a peek at the furniture underneath without getting dust and grime on her. Something about the style made her laugh a little, but she didn't share with the class as she let the cloth fall again.

Gladys poked her head into the kitchen door, then back out. "Looks like I found where the remodel is."

Quinn crossed to the window, looking out at the evergreen branches that covered the bottom half of the windows, and the darkening sky. It was not like a sunset. "It's more like it's being... drained," she remarked, frowning. 

They all re-grouped in the living room, still no more certain of where to go from there. "Maybe whatever we're looking for is upstairs?" Stella suggested. 

"We haven't even checked the whole bottom floor yet," Gladys pointed out. "This place is big."

"What was that?" All of the girls ducked instinctively at Nina's suppressed exclamation, even though the dust-sheet-covered couch was not much in between them and...whatever. 

Cautiously, they unkinked from their bent positions one by one, Nina first, staring wide-eyed into the murk of the entryway, then the others. "What was what?" Gladys was the first to ask the question on all of their minds.

Nina opened her mouth to try to describe it, but seemed to lose heart halfway through. "It was... weird. Human-shaped, but not... quite so." The group stared at her, clearly unimpressed by the vague description. 

"I think we should stick together even in here," Quinn suggested.

In agreement, they all followed her to where she was pushing open the door to the next room. She frowned at something on the other side, then pushed through. "Well that's wei--" The door slammed shut, almost as if it had been shoved from the other side.

"Quinn!" The others rushed to the door, Gladys reaching it first and wrenching it open. Quinn was not on the other side. "C'mon, let's go find her."

Not wanting to lose Gladys too, the rest rushed to follow. This time, when the door shut, it fell normally, like you would expect a door to. The four of them eyed it and moved into the room. It seemed to be a study, empty bookshelves on the walls, a heavy desk similarly draped to the ones outside. Sticking together, they moved through the empty, preternaturally still room. 

Nina gestured to the door on the far end. "Maybe she went there?"

It was as good an idea as any, and hey moved toward it as a group, Nina and Stella stepping through together first. Gladys followed and then, before Emma could, again the door sung shut, nearly hitting Emma in the nose. 

"Not funny!" She cried, shoving the door open. But while the others had clearly gone into the kitchen, with a glimpse of a table-saw in the middle when the door was fully open, the room Emma stepped cautiously into was most definitely a bedroom, heavy four-posted bed with bare mattress and everything. "Really not funny.”

\--

"Where'd she go?" None of the three remaining had any answer to Gladys' question. 

After a moment, Nina screwed up her courage enough to say, "I don't know. Let's go look," and walk back toward the door they had just come in. 

Gladys yanked her back before she touched it. "How do you know you're not gonna disappear on us too if you go through there again?"

Stella hummed reflectively. "She does have a point..."

"We can't just stand around here waiting for them to come back," Nina pointed out. Stella conceded this point with another shrug. 

Stella moved through the kitchen, examining the power tools and construction business in the half-remodeled kitchen. Frowning, she bent to examine the power switch on the tablesaw that had a half-cut piece of wood on it, then stood quickly. "It's on..." Clearly there had been someone using it before everything stopped. And just as clearly they were not there any more.

As Gladys and Nina kept arguing, she picked her way over towards the breakfast nook, peering out the window. "Hey guys?" She called. The voices stopped, and she turned. 

They were gone. Stella hurried back, only to turn the corner from breakfast nook to...laundry room, the washer and dryer with a fine layer of dust over the top. Even before time stopped, they had not been used in some time. 

More importantly, neither Nina nor Gladys were there. "Aw, shit." Eyes widening at her own language, she crossed herself quickly, and turned back around to find her way back.

\--

"We have to go find them!" Gladys was raising her voice, little by little, which worried Nina.

"I agree, obviously, but we can't go running around like idiots, or we're going to get separated too and need rescuing as well.”

Gladys threw her hands up. "Fine. Then if we go through every door together, we might not get separated?"

Nina considered it for a second, then shrugged helplessly. "Maybe, though I mean. Look at Stella. It's definitely not for certain."

"I'll risk it. Let's go." Gladys stomped off toward the door on the other side of the kitchen, Nina following in her wake. 

The door to the dining room that they had seen from the front hall was a swinging door, but Gladys made sure it didn't swing shut before Nina was through. Nina nodded begrudging thanks, and they continued, pushing open the door back out into the front hall. 

Except it wasn't the front hall, it was the study from the other side of the kitchen. Both of them turned to look at the dining room behind them, then back. "But that's impossible," Nina said.

Both stared at the desk in its impossible room for a second before Nina hurried toward the door on the opposite side of the room, the one that should open into the kitchen.

Instead, it was a bathroom, the master bath probably, judging by the large tub. "Really, really impossible."

\--

It was like playing roulette, you didn't know what you were going to get when you pushed open a door, Stella thought, pushing open yet another. She had stopped keeping track of where she had visited so far, though the powder room stuck out in her mind, since it had only had the one door. Closing that and re-opening had brought up a small, empty bedroom though, so it had at least been an experiment in how this place seemed to be working.

What she was becoming more and more aware of as she went along was the utter silence. With four other people (that she knew of) in the house, there should have been something, creaks or footsteps, but instead there was nothing.

Which made her wonder if she was imagining the low growls. They didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, and would stop or move whenever she tried to focus on them or where the were coming from. So Stella decided to mostly ignore them and open another door.

The next one she opened, from the closed-in porch, seemed to be a linen closet, lined at least partly in cedar, judging from the smell. Since she couldn't fit herself in there, even if she tried, she closed it again, waited ten seconds, humming absently, and re-opened it.

Before she really noticed where it was, she had stepped through, fully believing that the only way to keep going was forward. It wasn't until she'd closed the door that she realized that she had just shut herself in an unfinished basement. 

She spun around, about to let herself out, when there was a shriek from the dark, and she froze.

\--

Nina and Gladys traveled through the surreal landscape silently, conversation stilted here and there with observations like "What a big-ass bed" and "I'm not even sure that room was in the same house". They had noticed the same thing about the silence, but neither remarked on it, still moving. 

The two switched off between leading, sometimes Gladys driving forward, sometimes Nina seeking, always making sure not to shut the door on the other. 

Eventually, Nina held up a hand as they passed through the living room, quite a bit dimmer than the last time they had been there. "I need a break. Just a second."

"Fine," Gladys said, perching herself on the arm of the couch. 

Nina sat gingerly down, not wanting to disturb the dust-cover too much. 

Stony silence reigned. Nina closed her eyes against it, 'looking' as she had before. Gladys watched her. 

"So," Gladys finally spoke, sarcasm in her voice. "See any way to get us out of here?"

Nina opened her eyes long enough to throw Gladys a look for picking a fight. "I'm looking, alright, I'm trying."

"And?" 

Another glare from Nina. "Look, it's not like you've done anything to help."

Gladys scoffed. "At least I didn't get us into this mess."

"What, and I did?" Any pretense of looking for a way out of this was gone. Nina was into the argument now. "And not getting us into trouble is not the same as getting us out of it."

"You can't even do that now, can you?"

The door that had opened onto the library the first time swung open suddenly, cutting the argument short.

\-- 

"Oh thank god I found you, I thought everyone had left me!" Stella rocked slightly on her feet as Emma rocketed into her, grabbing at her arm like a lifeline. 

Stella steadied herself, a hand on her chest. "Yeah, well, maybe try not giving me a heart attack and I'll think about sticking around?"

Slowly, Emma seemed to compose herself somewhat and, after a moment, peeled herself away from Stella. 

The two stood around awkwardly for a moment, before Stella finally asked. "So what were you doing stopping here?"

Emma shrugged to say that it wasn’t her fault, eyeing the darkness. "There were more of those things. They were between me and the door, until you got here."

Stella decided not to pry further. "Maybe we should go somewhere a little less creepy?"

Emma's only answer was to stomp toward the door Stella had just come through, wrenching it open--though remembering to hold it open for Stella. 

The next room was empty, just a bedroom. Opening the closet door brought them, bizarrely, to the attic. Personally, Stella thought it was nearly as creepy as the basement had been, but Emma threw herself down to sit on a leather trunk, resting her head in her hands. Stella took this to mean that they were stopping there, and found herself an old armoire to lean against for a while.

But it appeared that Emma's respite was only temporary, as she leapt back up. Stella tensed, thinking she wanted to get moving again, but then sank back against the wood when she realized Emma was just pacing along the dusty floor like a caged lioness. "What exactly are you doing?" Stella ventured to ask, after a bit of this.

"Trying to think of a way out of this whole, stupid situation."

"Ah." Stella watched her for a moment. "Is that helping?"

Emma shot her a look. "Not really, but what else am I going to do, sit on a filthy trunk and despair?"

Stella eyed the furniture she leaned against a tad guiltily, then shrugged, not feeling anything akin to despair just yet, and not caring too much about the dust. Emma kept pacing. Stella, from where she stood, looked around the rather full attic, where trunks and suitcases and old furniture had apparently gone. It was during these observations that Emma began talking. Ranting, really, though Stella wasn't about to call it that to her face.

"This is so stupid! All I wanted to do was finish this stupid semester and never have to open a chem textbook again and then I get roped into this bullshit again... and now! Now this!" Every statement of Emma's was punctuated with a stomp that brought more dust spiraling up from the floor. "It's crazy and stupid, and I hate everything about this whole situation!"

Stella watched her go. "What... everything?" 

Emma shot her a look. "Well."

It wasn't an answer that helped. But Stella didn't so much take offense as take the implied insult and shrug it off. "Nah, I get it. I mean. We're not even the breakfast club of witches, are we?"

Emma's look turned bemused, so Stella shrugged it off too. "What I mean is that none of us exactly fit in quite as well as I guess we should. Even with each other." 

The last part was almost wistful afterthought, but Emma scoffed, dashing it down. Stella looked at her curiously, silently asking her what that was about. "I was fine before all of this. And I'll be fine once all of this crazy bullshit stops."

Stella just looked at her. It wasn't exactly disbelieving, but she definitely wasn't buying everything Emma said at face value. 

There didn't seem to be much more to say on the subject, so Emma resumed her pacing, and Stella her observations.  
‘  
Which was when, of course, she saw the glowing red eyes in the rafters.

\--

"Quinn!" For it was indeed her who had come through the door, looking startled at Gladys' exclamation for a moment. 

Then relief. "I found you, thank the powers." Quinn sagged against the open door.

"Where are the others?" Gladys asked, but Quinn shook her head. 

"I don't know, I haven't run into them." She looked to Nina. "You can't see them?"

Nina threw her hands in the air. "No, I can't, and I have tried. I've been trying. Believe me."

"Yeah," Gladys muttered, "no surprise there."

Nina glared at her, as Quinn raised a quelling hand. "Gladys, come on."

"No, nuh-uh, nope." Gladys stood, staring down Quinn. "You don't get to start with me too, this whole mess is your damn fault."

Quinn scoffed, leaning against the far arm of the couch from Gladys. "Didn't we already have this argument?" It was true, they had, which Nina acknowledged with a half-shrug and Gladys rolled her eyes at. "So let's focus less on who to blame for what and more on getting out, can we all do that?"

The argument had obscured sounds underneath it, out in the hall, ones that caught Nina's attention in the tense silence that followed. "Um. Uh-oh."

The uh-oh caught their attention too, right as a creature with the red eyes leaped from the shadows.

\--

"Emma," Stella said slowly. "You might... not want to turn around."

Which, of course, meant that the first thing Emma did was turn around, right as the thing leaped toward her from the rafters, and another slunk around her ankles, tripping her. Emma went down with a shriek.

Stella leapt toward her to help her, but stopped and stared. What had been an evil-looking, amorphous blob flying toward Emma's face was now a harmless little rat, beige and bewildered looking.

Especially when Emma shrieked again and sent it flying off into the darkness. 

"How weird, it's like it--" Stella stumbled forward, then jerked her hand back from the other creature that had come out of the dark as it snapped at her with glistening jaws in the middle of the dark mass. The other one may have just been a rat, but this one was not. Though the wrist she had landed on throbbing painfully, Stella rolled away from it, shoving at it with her mind. But it was only enough to keep it back, not enough to throw it anywhere.

Emma swung at it with a battered old cricket bat that had been up there, sending it hissing. Stella scrambled back. "Touch it! Like with your hand!" 

Emma glared at Stella like she had gone completely mad, then inadvertently did exactly as Stella had suggested, flinging out her hand to push away the creature that had sprung at her face. 

There was a flash of green light, and suddenly there was a raccoon, a normal-looking raccoon, that landed with a thump on the floor in front of them. Emma shrieked again, dancing backwards from it.

But it no longer seemed interested in the two girls, and instead fled into the darkness of the attic. 

"What the fuck was that?" Emma gasped. 

Stella had no answers for her. "I don't know. But I think we should go. There might be more of them."

They moved toward the door, Emma holding on to her new-found weaponry as they went.

\--

"Oh hell no!" Gladys reacted first, sweeping her hand in a gesture. Red light knocked the shadow creature aside, giving a loud growl as it went down.

There were more growls in the shadows that filled the entrance hall full. Nina, Quinn and Gladys backed away, grouping close together. 

"I think," Nina suggested, sparing a glance for the door behind them. "That we should run."

Even Gladys nodded, given all of the eyes observing them from the dark out there. "Yeah," she whispered. "Wait til the next one jumps, then head for the door."

Nina almost broke and bolted early, but Quinn put a steadying hand on her arm. Finally, another one, the size and shape of a large house cat, came leaping out of the darkness, followed close by a second. Gladys swept aside the first, the second, and followed Quinn and Nina through the door.

Right before, she caught a glimpse of an even bigger one, almost six feet, striding toward the door. 

Then it shut, and Gladys was off and running with the rest.

\--

Emma wrenched the door open, stepping through it without looking first, and immediately regretted it as she stumbled down one step, two, and then a third step before stopping her fall.

In order to not get separated, Stella had stuck close behind, knocking Emma down another couple of steps again as the door shut behind her.

With a couple of whispered invections on Emma's part, they collected themselves and, after a moment, started down the stairs. It was even darker here than it had been anywhere else, and this was not relieved when they entered a long carpeted hall. There should have been light from the windows, but only a little leaked in from the outside.

The hall was lined with doors, but it was still shocking when one flew open, disgorging Quinn, Nina, and Gladys all at once, Gladys slamming the door shut behind her.

There was an exclamation of happiness at finding the others from Stella and even a sigh of relief from Emma. The other three stared at the two like they were space aliens before seeming to register exactly who they were. 

Gladys was out of breath, hands on knees. The adrenaline and using her magic had been a bit tough, tougher than usual. But that wasn't what concerned her the most. "Nina, I saw it too." Nina stared at her. "Whatever the hell that thing was, it wasn't a person."

This made the hall of doors even creepier, and the group moved closer together. "I think we should keep moving," Quinn suggested. "Find the source of all of this and figure out what's going on."

As soon as Gladys had caught her breath they moved rapidly toward the end of the hall, choosing the biggest door on the end. The door was big enough that they could all step through at once, fearful of losing anyone else.

Which meant that they all fell together into the dark.

There was a collective scream in five different pitches, but it was Quinn and Stella who threw their hands up to try spells. Quinn simply bounced back off the spell currently in place, the feedback adjusting her trajectory to bounce off Stella.

When Quinn touched her, Stella's spell got the boost that she needed. With one hand, she grabbed Quinn's hand to keep the connection, and with the other, she grabbed Gladys' wrist, which provided a surge of power. Quinn, grasping what was going on, grabbed Nina's hand and shouted at her to take Emma's, cutting off Emma's scream, the last one still in the air.

With all five of them to drive the spell, Stella slowed them all down until they were stopped, in midair, dark all around them. 

"How are you doing that?" Quinn whispered.

Stella bit her lip, eyes still closed as she concentrated on holding on to the spell. "Same way I use my phone for selfies. Just," She swallowed nervously. "Bigger."

Quinn looked at Nina. "Can you see anything? Somewhere we can land?"

Nina looked at Quinn, then closed her own eyes to concentrate. "I think... down. Not much further. There's a floor. And a doorway."

"Great, more doors," Emma muttered, but was quickly shushed by Quinn.

Even more slowly than they had stopped, they began to descend again. Stella clearly didn't want to run them into the ground and have all of her hard work rescuing the group be for nothing. 

They landed on black and white checkered tile, a patch of it in murky light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

There was, indeed, another door there. Stella set them down in front of it, letting the spell go and immediately sitting down on the floor. It was clear the spell had taken a lot out of her.

The five of them stared at the door.

"Why don't we rest?" Nina asked. "I don't think anyone can follow us down here."

That was in no way a sure proposition, but Emma shook her head, firmly veoting that idea with a wave. "No, we have to keep moving, I think. It feels like it."

The others looked at her for further explanation. "I think if we slow down, we might not... speed back up," Emma finished. Stella yawned, then made a gesture at the others that it wasn't her fault her timing was poor.

"So we go on," Quinn concluded, turning her attention back to the door.

Gladys helped Stella get up from where she sat, and all five stood at the edge of the door. Quinn looked at the others and silently counted to three, before pushing at the door. It opened silently.

On the other side, there was more blackness. This darkness, however, was crawling with unformed, slithering shapes, glimpses of red eyes, sharp teeth, claws. About twenty feet in, there was a circle of light falling on more of the same black and white tile that the five of them stood on.

It seemed like none of the creatures had noticed the open door yet, so the group stood and watched. The movement in the dark sped up, got more frenzied on the right, and a flash of something not black. It was a dog, a golden retriever, becoming more animated as it was moved toward the circle of light, then released into it.

The creature cowered in the center of the tiles, scared by the black all around it, growling and snapping. Another circle formed outside the light, the ones between them and the dog silhouetted by the light. It was made of the shadow men that Nina and Gladys had seen before, more than one of them.

Slowly, the outer circle closed in on the dog, brushing its tail, its paws trying to dance out of the way, then all at once, subsuming the creature.

Just as slowly, they backed up again. All that was left in the center of the circle was a shadowy wisp that fled between two of the shadow men into the surrounding dark. The shadow men themselves, after a moment, melted back into the dark as well.

Slowly, Quinn pulled the door closed again.

The five of them moved as far away from the door as they could without letting it out of their sight, and discussed.

"I hate animals and even I think that was wrong," was Emma's whispered take on it. She looked like she was about to be sick, a sentiment they all shared to some degree.

Quinn had a slightly different perspective. "That's how they’re powering it. That's how they're keeping everything going. They've been taking living things and leaving them as shadows."

It made sense. To keep a spell running you needed to have energy and, whoever or whatever was holding the spell had to be getting it from somewhere. 

Nina saw it too. "That's why they're attacking us." They would certainly be the biggest sources of energy around, as far as all of them knew.

"So what do we do?" Stella asked.

They sat in contemplative silence for a long time. Slowly, Stella began to speak. "When Emma touched those things, they seemed to sort of. Change back to normal."

Emma shivered. "Yeah, normal and gross."

"But what if we used that? Made the shadows normal creatures again?"

"What, one at a time?" Quinn shook her head. "There's no way we could do it. Emma's strong but. There's a lot of shades in there."

Nina had been watching the door for the whole conversation, and gulped nervously when she saw it move. "Whatever we're going to do, I think we have to do it now."

They turned to look, and watched as shadows flowed from the now-opened door into the less inimical darkness, studded with growls and red eyes. The shadow people came next, surrounding the five of them just like they had the dog a few moments before. 

"Now or never!" Gladys shouted, making a slashing motion at one of them, red power flowing out and knocking it over. 

Nina shouted, "watch out!" to Stella, who ducked and let the small shadow creature leap past her and into Emma's outthrust hand. The non-shadow squirrel spun away with a squeak almost as surprised as Emma's.

Quinn tried slowing down time outside the circle, but the backlash nearly knocked her flat. "This isn't working!"

Gladys turned to slap at the shadow person leaning down over Quinn, and missed the one that got its hand-like-appendage on Stella's cheek. Nina saw though, shouting Stella's name as she went down in a heap, eyes still open. 

Nina crouched over Stella, patting her cheek and nearly sobbing in relief when Stella gasped and coughed, sitting up, then standing while leaning heavily on Nina. "It tried to drain my energy, it tried to turn me into one of them," Stella panted.

The shadows seemed to grow taller.

Which was when Gladys decided that she had had enough of this. 

Gladys hair surrounded her, crackling with suppressed lighting, as she stepped up between Stella and the shadows, a fierce angel between her and the others. "No more!"

After a moment of sheer awe, Quinn was the first to step forward to her, in that graceful glide of hers, placing a hand on Gladys' shoulder, nodding encouragement when Gladys glanced aside. As had happened during the fall in the dark, the spell Gladys was instinctively weaving grew stronger, brighter. With a hand up from Nina, Stella came next, smiling nervously at her first and fastest friend as she took her place to Gladys' left, turning all of the fierceness and none of the grin on their foes.

Emma and Nina were half a step behind glancing at each other first, then, with a firm nod on Nina's part and a half-shrug on Emma's, as if to say 'might as well’ to trying this on-the-fly plan. They each placed a hand on Gladys back, Emma willing strength and courage with all of herself, and Nina steadiness and clarity, like the person she had always wanted to be. 

As the power grew, the shadows shrank. It was just a sense at first, save for the lightning in Gladys' hair. But soon that light spread to all of them, tinged with the same colors they had seen before, the lightning arcing over all five of them, lashing out into the darkness.

No incantation was needed, just to keep building and building that steady flow of power, over-whelming the darkness and creating light.

The light won out over everything, and then there was only light.

\--

The five of them sat or lay where they had fallen on the dusty wooden floor, even Emma too tired to freak out at the grime. An unexpected noise outside got their attention immediately: the whoosh of a car as it went past.

Quinn rolled to her feet first, pushing aside the moth-eaten curtains to look at out at the street. First smiling, then laughing with relief, she leaned her head against the glass for a moment, then turned back to the others, already picking each other up. By unspoken agreement, they moved toward the door and stood on the front step in a huddle, blinking at the streaming sunlight. 

No more dark creatures or eerie frozen status people, the signs of life had returned to the residential street, cars and dog walkers and even birds in hedges.

It felt good, and when Stella enthusiastically suggested they get ice cream to celebrate their various groans, protestations and reasons why that would not be very much fun in this state did not sour the mood too much.

But they did want to get out of the house, as normal as it seemed, as quickly as possible. Voices from the kitchen let them know they were not alone anymore as they slipped out into the entry hall, then through the front door.

Heading the group, Quinn nearly tripped over the oblong package laid at the end of the stone walkway. It caught her eye because it looked the same as the one that had showed up at their door that night, what felt like forever ago. And, indeed, upon further examination, was addressed to the five of them. Quinn held it up to show the others. 

"Well, open it," Stella urged. Emma looked ready to bolt, tired as she was, if the package did so much as make an odd noise, but Quinn took her up on the urging, peeling back the brown paper and holding up the artifact inside.

It was a mirror, strange symbols carved around the edges, and with an unusual black sheen to the glass. Nina stooped to pick up the note that had fluttered out of the paper wrapping. "Well done."

They looked at each other, finding no answers here. It would have to be a mystery for another day.

\--

The Thing That Was Not Ian turned away from the window, a sneer playing across its borrowed face. Letting the curtains fall back into place returned the room to its original darkness. 

"Well then," it spoke. And said no more.

**Author's Note:**

> This may not have been the fandom that we matched on, but I watched this series on a whim and immediately fell in love with it, so thank you so, so much for requesting it! (I love all of the girls as well, and was thrilled to write ensemble fic for them too.) I hope this was to your tastes! I certainly enjoyed writing it (even if there are all sorts of head-canon bits I have now that didn't have a chance to make it in here).
> 
> A thanks to my betas, they're pretty great. 
> 
> May your year be merry and bright.


End file.
